Mac Enterprise Numbers Expected to Increase in 2010

What with all the emphasis these days on the iPhone, it's always nice to hear that the Mac is still going strong. The latest data comes from the Enterprise Desktop Alliance [1], a consortium of enterprise software companies that focuses on the needs of multi-platform enterprises. The EDA's just-concluded survey found that 66 percent of 322 IT administrators from large multi-platform organizations expect to increase the number of Macs at their sites in the coming year. (To be fair, that number is down a bit from last year, when 74 percent of respondents predicted increases, with 73 percent actually seeing increases.) The main reasons cited for choosing Macs come as no surprise: user
preference, increased productivity, and ease of technical support.

The survey also asked respondents about the major issues confronting IT administrators in multi-platform organizations. The top two issues, which ranked as "very" or "extremely" important to 79 percent of the respondents, were file sharing between operating systems and security, followed closely by client management, Active Directory integration, and cross-platform help desk and knowledge base support. Interestingly, although parity between Macs and PCs in the organization remained important to 81 percent of the respondents in 2009, that number is down from 94 percent in 2008.

You can download a PDF [2] with more details about how the survey was conducted and with additional results.

If you're working in a multi-platform enterprise, let us know in the comments if you're seeing more or less emphasis on the Mac in your organization, and what the main issues are.